Joel shook his head. He didn’t like that Jake had a tendency to become attached, ascribing emotions to each automaton that were impossible for it to actually experience. Intentionally demonstrating his indifference, Joel tossed the head into the air to give it a further plummet into the hole.
Had her husband not perished in the mining accident the previous year, he would be filling her home with laughter and music from his guitar while she knitted and waited on the oven to ding. But silence is all that filled her home now.
I heard of a place called the Striking Tree, where lightning from a mysterious storm cloud strikes the tree every hour. They said that’s where I had to go, if I wanted to find my worth.
She tossed dirt onto the embers of her campfire and took in the mountain view from her bluff. Such beauty could only reside in the vast landscapes she often hunted through. The human heart was too small to contain beautiful things.
A cold breeze swept across the lake, slicing through her, effortlessly. She was too small and frail to present a challenge to anything like the wind, which made her an easy target to everyone she met.
A layer of snow is covering everything, concealing the ugliness of the shivering earth underneath. It all seems too beautiful, too perfect. I brace myself for the onslaught of ridicule from her, covering my heart with a layer of contentment as fleeting as the snow.